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The irregularities were revealed by the Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico
CyberNews 05/22/2025 Updated May 22, 2025

The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued on Thursday an adverse opinion on the fiscal operations of the Metropolitan Driver Services Center (CESCO), after revealing irregularities with the handling of fines, possible fraud in status changes and the loss of more than $50 million in revenue.

According to the report, “$47.9 million of 543,711 uncorrected fines had not been collected as of 2019”, due to errors in the system and the lack of personnel to process them. The Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTOP) contracted a company for $350,000 to work the fines, but 90% of the tickets could not be corrected because they were illegible.

In a sample of 42 invoices totaling $6 million, 69% was certified by personnel outside the digitization process, and 31% was paid without signed control sheets. In addition, auditors found status changes of fines without evidence of payment and cases in which operators invalidated their own fines or those of other employees, outside working hours.

The Comptroller identified 19 operators who changed the status of 129 fines irregularly and altered another 2,290 fines totaling $83,100 outside the sample examined. The report notes that these actions were referred to the Department of Justice and to the Office of Government Ethics in February 2022.

The DTOP confirmed in December 2024 the dismissal of an employee of the CESCO Metropolitano and the intention to dismiss three employees of the CESCO of Bayamón, Caguas and Minillas.

The audit also revealed that between 48 and 68 percent of the 921,322 AutoExpreso fines issued between 2016 and 2018, equivalent to 29.2 million dollars, were not collected due to the lack of mechanisms to identify drivers of leased vehicles.

The report covers the period from January 1, 2015 to June 30, 2021 and is available at www.ocpr.gov.pr.